This invention relates to a mounting bracket for mounting a component in a housing of an electronic device, such as a computer, and more particularly to such a bracket for accommodating components of various heights within a limited space in the housing.
Many electronic devices include a multitude of components which must be carefully and precisely mounted within the limited confines of a housing. For example, modern computer systems, including personal and laptop computers, incorporate one or more mass storage devices, usually in the form of floppy or hard disk drives, of variable complexity and size. These components must be mounted in the housing within very limited space restrictions, especially with respect to height, yet must be easily removable for replacement, repair or other purposes. Also, some of the components, such as disk drives, have to be accessed through slots in the housing and therefore must be mounted at a precise predetermined location within the housing.
A wide variety of mounting brackets and other devices have been used to enable these type of components to be mounted in the above manner. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,979,909 discloses the use of resilient mounting members provided on the sides of a disk drive which are received within corresponding openings in the inner wall of the computer housing.
However, prior art mounting devices, including those of the above type, are usually dedicated to mounting a single electronic component having specific dimensions and cannot be used for different sized components. This limitation becomes particularly acute in connection with computers since it is often desirable to replace, or upgrade, the disk drives with disk drives of a different size after the computer is put in use.